Hypocrisy Personified in GOP Doings

I have long criticized the GOP for being hypocritical in just about every PR move, every political stance and in allowing intellect to be devalued so that morons can run (and ruin) the party. Here’s some evidence supporting my claims

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) Said Stimulus Funds Would Create “Much Needed Jobs.” Minority Leader Boehner: “The stated intent of the so-called stimulus package was to create jobs, and certainly a $57 million slush-fund studying projects did nothing to achieve that goal. With Ohio’s unemployment rate the highest it’s been in 25 years, I’m pleased that federal officials stepped in to order Ohio to use all of its construction dollars for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.” [Boehner Statement, 6/15/09]

The list is sooooooo long. Where is the “liberal media” on this story? Ha. Where is the mainstream media? Thumbs firmly up its own bloated, lazy ass. This alone is a scathing indictment of deep GOP bullshit.

New IRS statistics show that President Bush’s 2007 tax cuts disproportionately benefited the very wealthy. “The average income reported by the 400 highest-earning U.S. households grew to almost $345 million in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier.” Each of these top 400 households “paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992.”

And from the source Business Week story:

The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show.

Tea Partiers and conservatives can prattle on about taxes and big government, but the rich need to pay their fair share. PERIOD. P.S., Obama is still CUTTING TAXES.

So what about the stimulus? What are GOP leaders saying today? What about the right-wing noise machine?

Conservatives can’t argue reality, so they create a distracting narrative. Like the language here (arguing that being hypocritical ISN’T the story) and the typical ignorant bluster seen here. Of note:

I don’t know the facts of the case, but the logic of the Democratic position baffles me.

I have heard both Maddow and Olbermann talk about the hypocrisy of the Republicans with respect to the stimulus.

In some cases, Republicans wrote letters asking for fund where the letters were dated BEFORE their no votes. So they can’t exactly claim they were just asking for their fair share after the stimulus passed.

steve-o

Jon, I like how you present a lot of good info. But I have to take issue with your, high earners pay your fair share…

What is fair? The fact is that people in the top earning category pay somewhere around 35-40 percent tax (that’s just federal) and the average middle class household pays about 25. So, what is fair? The idea of tax brackets seems silly to me. Because I worked two jobs this year and made a little extra money, I got pushed into the next tax bracket and got the joy of paying 10% more tax. Is that fair?

What is my incentive to work my ass off? So that I can get the pleasure of paying out more money for the fact that I made only 1500 more and got pushed into a higher tax bracket.

No thank you.

http://twitter.com/laynemarie laynemarie

steve-o,

It’s so much more complicated than that. If you moved into a higher tax bracket due to extra income, you’re not paying an additional 10% taxes on all of your income, only the income above your previous tax bracket.

Also, to say that people in the top earning category pay 35% in federal taxes is misleading. Generally, people in that top category are obtaining the majority of their income from investments, etc. rather than wages. So they may be paying 35% on their wages, their actual taxes paid don’t equal 35% of total income. (See the article Jon linked to, noting that the top earners paid an average of 16.6% in 2007.)

And to drive it home a bit further. Just like when you moved into that higher tax bracket but do not pay the additional 10% on all of your income, top earners also do not pay the highest rate–35%–on all of their earned income. For example, while they’re paying 35% on income over $374k, they’re still paying just 10% on income up to $8k, 15% on $8k-$34k, 25% on $34k-$80k, etc.

So. Please, continue working your ass off because it’s still beneficial for you to earn more money even if you’re paying a higher tax on SOME of it.

makfan

You are dead on that the tax rate doesn’t change for your entire income when you push into a new bracket.

Don’t forget FICA, which caps out in the low 100Ks, so all poor and middle class people pay this on 100% of their salaries, whereas people who make big bucks have the tax eliminated after hitting the cap–that cushions the income tax bite as the brackets go up.

Also, people in high earnings brackets typically have numerous deductions and can afford to look into complex tax shelters that don’t help lower earners.

I just love it when people say that paying 2% more on part of their income is such a huge disincentive. I hate the US tax system. It’s so effing complicated.

It’s an impressive mass of quotes and stories and arguments. Whether it amounts to a coherent analysis of our economic problems and the impact of current policy is another matter. But, as Napoleon said, quantity has a quality of its own.

It isn’t hard to find contradictory and hypocritical and stupid commentary by politicians of _any_ party. So that doesn’t tell us much. It’s more useful to offer a framework for understanding the problem. That’s absent here.

GOP hypocrisy aside, the stimulus bill was an effort to support economic activity by temporarily borrowing to increase demand for goods and services. But our slowdown is the exhaustion of an economy hyperstimulated by exactly that same policy, and the extension of excess credit generally as encouraged by the Fed and federal housing policy.

Even if the stimulus succeeds in propping up employment temporarily, it does nothing for the country’s structural problems but deepen them. As would the health care bill. The GOP can be justly criticized for hypocrisy, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong here.

http://blurbomat.com/wordpress blurb

While there are tons of examples of both parties being hypocritical, this latest episode is far and above anything I’ve ever seen in my life. That conservatives aren’t screaming harder AT THEIR OWN PEOPLE is baffling.

I suspect we’ll see some GOP gains this November, but the ads that the Dems can run will destroy any credibility of incumbents engaging in this crass hypocrisy.

I would argue that 2000-2010 is our lost decade. Two recessions, no real recovery from either and a housing bubble to boot. Most economists (I’d love counter arguments presented, but it’s rare from my conservative friends to actually provide anything other than Milton Friedman quotes) say that deficit spending is the fastest way to recovery. I’m not so sure that structural problems are being deepened to the degree that the right wing noise machine is producing.

Health care bill has been shown to pay for itself over time. I would argue that even with miscalculation, the benefit of healthcare reform to society will far outweigh other concerns. I’d encourage you to read Krugman’s latest in the New York Times, but not sure you venture into that opinion space.

Republicans are burying themselves in bullshit. That much is clear. And it’s sad.

nobody

I am shocked — really — that you would overlook so many hypocrisies among those you support, and then complain that these are the worst and that conservatives aren’t policing themselves.

Gee whiz, I just read the Glenn Beck (btw, not conservative, as far I can tell) was criticizing CPAC over the weekend. Ryan and Cantor and Coburn the National Review and the WSJ editorials have been criticizing the GOP for years. McCain ran against his own party, in a sideways fashion. Meanwhile, Evan Bayh, a Democrat actually positioned to do something about the partisanship of his own faction, is instead headed out of town moaning about how awful it all is. Who doesn’t expect to see Bayh in 2016, telling us he told us so? But it’s _Republicans_ who can’t discipline themselves? And these are the worst you’ve ever seen? Friend, they know they lost power because of six years of hypocrisies far greater than the niggling **** you detail here.

Meanwhile, even as we speak the President is positioning a “bipartisan summit” on healthcare, even while he plans to blame Republicans for obstructionism and whip up his party to ram a bill through reconciliation. Never mind whether that is “more hypocritical”, though it’s a fair bid to be so. This sort of meta-argument about unanswerable questions of who is more bipartisan is exactly why politics is so excrutiatingly stupid.

Your guys have the Executive and bicameral majorities. They are expected to lead. No one wants to hear excuses. If they need Republican votes, then shut off the campaign and go find some Republican votes. The idea that they can’t get ten votes in the Senate for anything on health care is just laughable. These people are _politicians_, blurb, they _want_ to make deals because they only matter if they _can_ make deals.

The real problem is that the Republicans won’t vote for anything like the promises made by the President and leadership to their party base and activists. This is not the Republicans’ fault or problem.

The GOP has already collapsed on its inability to match its stated philosophy with its governing action. The Democrats are now collapsing on their leadership’s inability to meet activist demands out of all proportion to the realities of the general elections. The party leaders can’t maintain discipline without meeting those promises and can’t maintain majorities if they do. The country is strong enough to work through the purgation of these elite vanities. But the failure of our political class to act more responsibly, and to align the expectations of the electorate and the factions to our economic realities, will cause far more distress and unrest than was really necessary.

And while that’s going on you want to argue about who’s most hypocritical. Seriously, you can do better than that.